"Games you can play Cold" Topic

The YouTube channel Miniature Game Montage was commenting that they wanted to restart Kill Team but found the latest version too complicated

That got me thinking about games you can play Cold, like riding a bike after a few months or years. For me that would be

Bolt Action
DBA

What other games can be played cold? What makes this possible?

"Napoleon's Battles", because I've been playing it for 30+ years.

"Dragon Rampant", because there are a minimum of mechanisms and they all are pretty intuitive (whenever you roll the dice you want high numbers, # hits/target armor = lost strength points, etc)

QILS – five minutes for the rules, five minutes for most of the scenarios. New people, including first time wargamers, seem to pick up on it quickly.

One hour Skirmish Wargarmes Rules, Song of Drums and Tomahawks would be my go to rule sets.

Space Weirdos link -is v cheap and is more fun than 'Kill Team' as well as being very easy to pick up IMHO. There is also Sword Weirdos for fantasy.

H.G. Wells's Little Wars – simple rules, matchstick shooting toy guns make for an extremely easy game to play 'cold'.

The Song of Blades and Heroes system. A number of rule books for different historical periods, yet the rules are all the same engine. Makes it very easy to pick up.

My games. It's amazing how easily I recall the rules.

Wings of War/Glory is brilliant and easy to pick up. So is its cousin X-Wing.

Space Hulk is dead easy.

I found Mordheim quite easy to grasp, but it was a hosted game at a con, so I don't know what the host might have trimmed from the details.

My bigger battle gaming is largely Warmaster (or its variants), which isn't a five minute game to learn, unless hosted.

+1 Fitzovich

Although I would do a quick perusal of some of the more complicated rules to get up to speed.

Fire and Fury or Command Decision

All of the Rampant Rules. Give me a QRS and we're off to the races.

Lots of stuff at the magazine article level. Aelred /Glidden's old "Landing Party" series, or "Charge for Dummies." Young's "Charge!" pretty much and his "Introductory Game" certainly. I keep binders of such, but you caught me on vacation.

Full Thrust

King of the Battlefield. Played often enough to know them.
What a Tanker. Pretty basic, options limited by command dice.

The Sword and the Flame.

All of the above

I have played lots of games cold

Lost a lot, but played a lot of games

+1 for all the Rampant Rules
Battletech Tier 1 and 2 (all that goofy Tier 3 stuff adds needless complication but keeps the min max dweebs at bay)
Dungeons and Dragons (most editions)
Wings of War/Glory

The Sword and the Flame.

To the Strongest

On to Richmond for ACW.

"What makes this possible?"

Setting aside just being thoroughly familiar with a set, I'd say relative simplicity, and especially as few mechanisms as possible. Start with a base number--say 20?--and subtract one point for every time the rules say "except" "only" or "unless." Rules in single digits are suspect for this. Rules in negative numbers are automatically excluded.

Any of the Fist Full of Lead rulesets. Super easy to learn and play.

I will agree with the OP that DBA is a good easy game. Not sure I would say playable to any reasonable degree cold with just 15 to 20 min instruction: it had sublty's that require a few gamaes to get the best out of. It's If I recall about 50 pages long. Personaly a bare minimum fo a game worth playing and its not great. It's Big Brother DBM is a far better game as its more credible as a simulation, better than many alternatives.

The world of boardgaming commonly creates games which can be played cold, although there are exceptions. The key factor is how long are the rules. If the rules are too long then its fails. If the rules are short enough then it is possible to play cold, although even in this case at least one player has to know enough to start the gaming process. Back in the days of SPI, a rules book which was no longer than 12-16 pages of 8-point 3 column rules was the maximum point when the rules was no long a "Go in Cold" set of rules. This translates to about 24-32 pages of 12-point single column rules, or 18-24 pages of 10 point 2 column rules. This excludes optional rules, scenarios, cheat sheets, designers notes and any non-rules specific text. If we look at figure gaming rules, Spearhead, not including the advanced rules, is 12 point, two columns and is about 28 pages, so with a bit of effort may fit in the "Go in Cold" requirement. Few other rules can fit into this category. Of course if one player is an expert then that player can teach the other how to play. However that is rarely a game and closer to a training exercise or educational course.

pfmodel seems a good definition of what can be played cold. It highlights how crude they have to be to play cold. That's the price you pay for a very simple set of rules. I does not mean they dont make a good game (like Chess) but they are going to lack historic detail. Even DBA does not fit in to your can be played cold definition and I would agreee with that assessment.

Of course if one player is an expert then that player can teach the other how to play. However that is rarely a game and closer to a training exercise or educational course.

I do this most times at our monthly game day. We have two new players coming in two weeks, and at least one of them will probably play our QILS wargame.

We have a few regulars who don't play the TTWG often. In some ways, instructing someone on an activity that they do rarely can be harder than instructing someone who is coming in completely cold.

Scenario has as much to do with this as the rules themselves. Last game day, we did the attack at the drive in scenario. One player had never played the rules before. Two were familiar with the rules, but not the scenario. One other player had played the scenario once before (but the last time was biker zombies (movie: Psychomania) this time was birds (movie: The Birds)). Then me.

I does not mean they dont make a good game (like Chess) but they are going to lack historic detail.

Every wargame lacks an infinite amount of historical detail.

etotheipi ALL simulations in my experience, which includes significant ammounts of Aerospace simulations, lack infinite amounts of detail. Some detail is important fpr a particular simulation case, for others not so much. Too littel detail can degrade the simulation significantly so less detail can degrade a simulation, excessive detail may not add to a simulation. There is an inevitable compromise. Overly simple is no always better.

Overly simple is no always better.

No, it isn't. But you've said less detail is alway worse (crude, unhistorical, etc.), which is equally false.

Volume of detail is not the appropriate criterion. Relevance is. Relevance (a subjective framework of what is important) requires a referent (as assertion of what we want to do).

A small level of detail can be more historically accurate than a larger level of detail depending on how the detail fits the relevance frame in terms of representing the referent.

This is one of the big problems in military simulations – they try to throw "more" in to make it "better". More doesn't always increase utility. And additional functionality without controls tuned to the actual use case can actually degrade perfromance.

and significantly so less detail can degrade a simulation,

Note the Word CAN in the above. Note the term "always worse" dose not appear in my thread only in yours.

Note the term "always worse" dose not appear in my thread only in yours.

By artificially overconstraining what I said as if it were suppsed to be a direct quote from you, which I did not say it was, you have created a factually correct statment that belies the truth.

Here's a list of you equating less quantity of rules to lower quality from this thread only …

That's the price you pay for a very simple set of rules.

It highlights how crude they have to be to play cold.

It's If I recall about 50 pages long. Personaly a bare minimum fo a game worth playing and its not great.

… is three times in two posts.

"Well sir we have no jet packs, and we have no Jet packs and siewe have no jet packs, I mentioned it 3 times sir as I thought it important" Crition Red Dwarf.

So … you're aggreeing with me that you say less detial is always worse, even if you didn't use those exact words?

After all, you've said that way more often than three times, so it must be important (to you).

I am saying that less detail CAN degrade a simulation depoending on the objectives of the simulation. Oversimple CAN be as bad as overcomplex.